This year brought us comet landings, disease outbreaks, new dinosaurs, and cyberterrorism. Here are the most important science stories of 2014.

This year brought us comet landings, disease outbreaks, new dinosaurs, and cyberterrorism. Here are the most important science stories of 2014.

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The Ebola Outbreak

The Ebola Outbreak

The World Health Organization reports that as of mid-December, more than 7,000 people have died from Ebola, the highly contagious virus that is still ravaging West Africa. Despite a handful of high-profile cases, the United States escaped the worst of the outbreak. Still, scientists throughout the country are working hard to combat Ebola overseas with innovative vaccines as well as less conventional therapies. The United States may ultimately spend up to $1 billion fighting Ebola.

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Rosetta and Philae

Rosetta and Philae

On November 12, the European Space Agency made history by landing a robot on a comet. The Rosetta space probe and its Philae lander had been en route to 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko for a decade, and the spacecraft came out of hibernation just last January in preparation of the landing.

But celebration of the November rendezvous quickly turned to frustration as it became clear that the Philae probe would not be able to carry out its full mission. The lander bounced upon impact and settled in a shadowy location where solar cells could not collect enough sunlight to keep the power on. Despite the mission's short duration, the science conducted on the comet's surface could have broad implications for the origins of the solar system.

The Ebola Outbreak

The World Health Organization reports that as of mid-December, more than 7,000 people have died from Ebola, the highly contagious virus that is still ravaging West Africa. Despite a handful of high-profile cases, the United States escaped the worst of the outbreak. Still, scientists throughout the country are working hard to combat Ebola overseas with innovative vaccines as well as less conventional therapies. The United States may ultimately spend up to $1 billion fighting Ebola.

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Rosetta and Philae

On November 12, the European Space Agency made history by landing a robot on a comet. The Rosetta space probe and its Philae lander had been en route to 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko for a decade, and the spacecraft came out of hibernation just last January in preparation of the landing.

But celebration of the November rendezvous quickly turned to frustration as it became clear that the Philae probe would not be able to carry out its full mission. The lander bounced upon impact and settled in a shadowy location where solar cells could not collect enough sunlight to keep the power on. Despite the mission's short duration, the science conducted on the comet's surface could have broad implications for the origins of the solar system.

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The First Synthetic Chromosome

One seemingly small victory in bioengineering could change the entire field of genetics for years to come. Back in March, a team of geneticists at Johns Hopkins University became the first to synthesize an entire artificial chromosome. These synthetic genes make up one of the 16 chromosomes in yeast, and the findings bring scientists one step closer to creating an entire organism—albeit a very small one—from scratch. Because yeast is an essential ingredient in insulin injections, beer and biofuel, it seems like this was a pretty good place for synthetic biologists to start.

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Gravitational Waves (Sort of) Exist

Gravitational waves are fickle bits of cosmic energy. Cosmologists believe that a period of rapid expansion (called inflation) immediately followed the Big Bang at the birth of our universe. Gravitational waves, first proposed by Einstein in 1916, are supposedly the smoking gun that could prove inflation and our model of the Big Bang.

In 2014, almost a century after Einstein's prediction, physicists announced that they had finally detected gravitational waves. But what began as an exciting announcement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics quickly faded into…dust. There's still a lot of confusion surrounding these experiments, which came out of the BICEP2 facility in Antarctica, including new speculation that the Harvard-Smithsonian team was actually right all along.

The possible discovery of gravitational waves may have been the most important physics story of 2014; it was certainly the most frustrating.

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The CDC's Lab Safety Scare

Our nation's highest-security labs, designated biosafety level 4, contain legitimately terrifying pathogens. This year we saw two major security breaches within these labs, involving a deadly strain of bird flu and the improper storage of anthrax. Due to a mix-up between vials at one high-security lab, workers at the CDC accidentally shipped a deadly strain of bird flu to a research laboratory, and then failed to report their error for at least six weeks. Then only a few months later, the CDC shipped vials of live anthrax spores, which had not been properly deactivated, to several ill-prepared laboratories. Although no one became infected in either case, these potentially dangerous lapses led some researchers to question whether we should shut down our bioweapons program altogether.

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Dinosaurs Were Huge, Feathered, and Occasional Swimmers

Over the summer, a major discovery in Siberia reinforced the theory that most dinosaurs actually had feathers. Then in September, scientists discovered the remains of what appeared to be the largest land animal in history, and even gave it an awesome nickname—Dreadnoughtus. Only weeks later, paleontologists identified Spinosaurus as the first swimming dinosaur.

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Cyberterrorism Strikes Again, And Again

Before the Sony Pictures hack and the fallout for The Interview, there was the Home Depot hack. And before that, there was the iCloud hack, the JP Morgan hack and the Ebay hack. It has been a big year for cyberterrorism. We can't be sure what all of this action means for 2015 and beyond, but the data breaches have already sealed the fate of magnetic-stripe credit card, and caused a whole lot of posturing between the U.S. and North Korea.

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Climate Disasters: Ice Sheet and California Drought

While 2014 saw one of the biggest climate rallies in history, it was also a year characterized by a few hard truths of living in an ever-warming world. Back in May, scientists announced that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse was inevitable. Then, over the summer, California experienced a drought so severe that the ground itself began to buckle. This year's IPCC report wasn't exactly good news, either. Even the Pope says it's time to act.

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Humans in Space: NASA Succeeds, Private Spaceflight Struggles

For this generation of young scientists who grew up dreaming of space travel, the past few years have been pretty disappointing. But 2014 was all about the revival of NASA's homegrown spaceflight initiatives—and the growing pains of private space travel. In December NASA successfully launched the Orion test vehicle, which will ultimately carry humans to Mars. But only months earlier, Virgin Galactic and Orbital Sciences Corporation both faced serious setbacks, one of which turned deadly. Private spaceflight may represent the future, but 2014 didn't do the burgeoning industry any favors.

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Social Media Experiments Fall Flat

We love science, and we all appreciate a good scientific experiment. But pretty much nobody appreciates being a guinea pig, especially without permission. Over the summer, a PNAS study revealed that Facebook had manipulated the newsfeeds of 700,000 users to find out whether or not it affected their moods (spoiler: it did, and everyone ended up lot sadder). Then only one month later, OKCupid brazenly admitted to experimenting on its unwitting users, too. In addition to being just plain creepy, there are also some serious ethical implications to this sort of research.